


King of Hearts Sutra

by babe_without_the_arms



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst Pajama Party, Discussion of Death, Gen, M/M, POV Alternating, Sharing a Bed, Trickster God Jeffries Fucking Up Everybody's Shit, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babe_without_the_arms/pseuds/babe_without_the_arms
Summary: "I am dead, yet I live."While searching for Dale Cooper in rural Nevada in 1999, Albert receives a phone call from Phillip Jeffries.





	King of Hearts Sutra

* * *

 

_Form is emptiness, emptiness is form..._

 

* * *

 

I.

He dreams. He is lucid. He knows he is dreaming. He is at his desk in Philadelphia. He is alone. He has been here, alone, for an untold amount of time. But he cannot leave until his phone rings.

He stares at it.

He stares at it some more.

And he keeps staring, his existence in this place little more than the sound of fluorescent buzzing of the office lights above his head.

He suddenly hears, after another untold amount of time, the sound of the elevator opening in the hallway. He looks toward the door and waits for someone to enter. No one comes.

The phone finally rings. And he answers.

“Hello?”

There’s a buzzing and clicking on the line.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Something pops--there’s a dial tone--and then there’s a voice. Drawling, keen, slow.

“Well how do you do, Albert.”

Albert blinks. He recognizes that voice.

“... Phil?”

“One and the same.”

"Where have you been?”

“Would you like to know where I am?”

“What kind of question is that? Yes, we’ve been looking for you for _years_ \--”

Something scrambles and splits. And suddenly he’s standing in a dark motel room, in front of... Phillip Jeffries himself, who is sitting at a green formica table over what appears to be a game of solitaire. Or perhaps Jeffries has found a way to read fortunes out of a 52 card deck. A teapot and a tea cup are resting on the table at his fingertips, and there’s an ashtray at the top of his card spread. He’s still in that suit he was wearing on the day he materialized into the office ten years ago.

“Please have a seat, Albert.”

 Albert stares at Jeffries, warily, but does as he’s asked, lowering himself into a chair in front of the table.

“How's our king of clubs?”

“King of…” Albert looked at Jeffries in confusion. Was this code?

“Gordon Cole.”

Albert frowned. “You’ll have to ask him.”

“Hmm.” Jeffries reached inside his suit jacket and removed a carton of Marlboros and patted one out, and offered it to Albert.

“No thanks. I quit.”

Jeffries tilted his head in surprise. “Now that's a shame. You always pulled off the Humphrey Bogart noir look so well. And the cigarettes make that look, you know.”

“Sorry. Can't accept.”

Jeffries chuckled. “This is a _dream_ , Albert. I believe you can do just about anythin’ your little heart wants in here.”

“It's not my dream.” Albert said, flatly.

Jeffries gave Albert a onceover, and then tucked the pack of cigarettes back into his suit jacket. “Don't eat fairy food and don't smoke their cigarettes, hmm? Looks like you been listenin’ to him after all.”

“Is that an admission of some kind?”

Jeffries sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “My goodness, Albert! I’m not tryin’ to keep you here. I don’t believe there's a soul on earth who can make Albert Rosenfield do somethin’ he don't want to do.” He drew on his cigarette. “I just want to talk.” He made an ‘x’ over his chest with his ring finger. “Cross my heart.”

“Talk.” Albert stared at Jeffries. “All right. Fine. So what is it that you want to talk about.”

“Cooper.” He pulled the king of spades card from the top of one of his card rows and tapped it.

Albert felt his whole body clench. He should have known. He breathed in slowly, trying to stay calm. He didn’t know what Jeffries wanted with Cooper. It could be any number of things. Giving in to fear would only reinforce the boundaries of this dream and decrease his chances of breaking out of it unscathed.

“What about Cooper.”

“You want the good news first or the bad?”

Albert stared back at him silently.

“Bad news, then. I won't leave you on a sour note.” Jeffries tapped the ash from his cigarette. “I’m very sorry, Albert. He's in a lot of trouble.”

Albert felt his heart begin to race. He swallowed down the dull beginnings of panic and made himself as immobile as possible, battering down his mental hatches.

“What kind of trouble.”

“Can't say.” Jeffries drew on his cigarette. “Took a hell of a lot of pullin’ strings to even make this meetin’ possible. Restricted access.” He drawled, gesturing behind Albert. Albert turned slowly in his chair, following Jeffries’ sightline, and then recoiled at the sight of a hunched, disgusting, bearded man standing at the door. The number 8 hanging on the wall, drawing his attention like some sort of omen. He turned back around to face Jeffries in confusion and increasing alarm. “Had to make a contract in order to be able to even get you in here. And part of the contract is that certain information is... off the table.”

Albert swallowed, trying to think.

“Are we talking physical danger? Psychological? Ontological?”

“Ontological. Mmm. Now that’s a big word. ”

“Answer the question.”

Jeffries exhaled, and a cloud of smoke billowed around his face in a large, wispy orb. He leaned in conspiratorially, his voice a slow, syrupy drawl.

“All of the _above_ , Albie.”

This wasn’t Jeffries. The thought came to him in sudden force, and it filled him with fear. He fought it. Fought the fear and the deep anger he felt at this… thing, whoever or whatever it was, that was invading his mind to dangle Cooper in front of him like a piece of bait.

“So then what's the good news.” He gritted.

“Good news is I can help him.”

“But?”

“But I need information. Stuff I don't have access to in this little place.”

“What information could you possibly not have access to now that I can offer?”

Jeffries took a long pull on his cigarette, surveying Albert silently. Then he pushed the king of hearts card across the table toward Albert.

Albert finally took his eyes off Jeffries to look down at the card. He stared at it for a moment in confusion. And then he realized its meaning, and a new jolt of fear shot through his body, one that went straight to his eyes and his face. He looked back up at Jeffries, his eyes wide.

“Me.”

Jeffries winked. “I guess that depends on how you define ‘you.’ All I need is access to information. Memories, thoughts, feelings. Dreams. Psychological material you've forgotten or repressed.” Jeffries shrugged. “Material you wouldn't got the faintest clue what to do with.”

“No.”

“Those famous Rosenfield manners.” Jeffries smiled. “You don't trust me? Your longtime senior colleague, Phillip Jeffries?”

“You're not Jeffries.” He bit back through clenched teeth.

A mistake. He knows it as soon as he says it. Out before he can stop himself. He’s slipping.

Jeffries paused. “Now that is an interesting _thought,_ Albert.” He put his fingertips on his chest over his heart. “You say I am not Jeffries. So who do you believe I am, now?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

Jeffries raised an eyebrow.

“Now look, Albert. Whatever our darlin’ Gordon Cole has told you about me since I left? Well, it ain’t _real_.”

Something finally snaps in Albert that he can’t control. “Well, you'll be happy to know he's had exactly nothing to say about you whatsoever since you left, Phil.” Albert snapped, his fists clenched in his lap. “In fact I don't think I've heard him say a word about you in ten fucking years. As far as he's concerned I think you might as well have never existed.”

There was a pause while Jeffries stared at him, an impossible amount of smoke pluming off the end of his cigarette and swirling into some sort of circular, spiraling void. And then in the silence Albert realized he had made a grievous, perhaps irretrievable, mistake.

“Really now." Jeffries stared at Albert, his eyes gleaming with interest, and traced a finger in a circle around the rim of his tea cup. “Now that if that isn’t _somethin’_ .” He took a sip, looking at Albert over the rim of his cup. “Like I never _existed._ Well.”

Sweat beaded on Albert’s forehead as years of repressed, near-forgotten anger suddenly surfaced in the dream. He put his head down and stared at the green formica table in front of him. Gripped at the arms of his chair, trying to block out Jeffries’s words, trying to keep this fucking mess from getting any worse than he’d already made it by losing his temper and opening his fucking mouth.

“Now look, Albert.” Jeffries put the cup back down on the table with a gentle touch. “I know you think y'all are gonna find Cooper the way you're goin’, but I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Gordon, bless his heart, has no clue what he's doin’. He makes messes that he don't have the faintest idea how to clean up. He's in way over his head. And I think you know that, but you're just too desperate to find Cooper to let yourself see it.”

He feels dizzy. Nauseous. Words and emotions and memories were threatening to retch out of Albert like vomit. He can't vomit. He can't vomit. Somehow he knows it would be all over if he vomited. He looked back up at Jeffries, trying to focus on the entity posing as a former colleague across the table and not on the cramping in his stomach.

“Albert, I _been_ his partner for almost 20 years. I know how that man thinks. And it ain't nothin’ but a goddamn mess dressed up in a nice suit and a couple of gimmicks and sweet magic tricks. But you pull away that curtain? All you gonna find is a scared little boy pullin’ every lever he sees, tryin’ to make it seem like he know what he’s doin.’” Jeffries voice softened, and his face took on an expression that Albert supposed was meant to look like pity, but just made his stomach churn even more violently in revulsion. “But all he’s _doin_ ’ is ruinin’ people’s _lives_ , Albert. And all _you_ ever gonna do is run after him with a broom, cleanin’ up the soot off his boots when you should be focusing on helpin’ Cooper. And _we_ can _help_ him.” Jeffries stabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and leaned across the table.

A wave of nausea takes over Albert, and he squeezes his eyes shut, forcing his stomach to stay put.

“Now you just take it easy, Albert. Don’t make yourself sick.”

“Let me go, Phil.” Albert forces out through clenched teeth. He can’t hold out much longer.

“Well all right then. I _said_ I wasn't tryin’ to keep you. All you had to do was ask.” Jeffries pointed at him. “You're the one who decided to stay this whole time.”

“Now. Let me go now.”

“Of course.” Jeffries pushed another card across the table: the king of diamonds. “Here’s my card before you go. Call me if you wanna talk again, y'all hear?”

* * *

 

II.

 

His eyes flew open, waking into nighttime darkness, his forehead beaded with sweat and his heart racing in his ears.

His breathing is shallow as his mind scrambles to cope with the realization that he has just left one constructed reality for another, both of which felt equally real. It takes him a moment to remember where he is: the only room left in a dingy roadside motel in middle-of-nowhere Nevada. First, there is panicked relief: he seems to have made it out of the dream. Second, there is a sudden awareness that there is a warmth at his back, and he remembers not only where he is, but who he's with. And third, he realizes that at some point in the night, he and Gordon had tossed and turned their way from opposite sides of the bed into somewhere in the middle, and were now lying back-to-back.

He's about to sit up and rectify this mutual invasion of personal space when a sudden bout of dizziness from post-SLD vertigo sets in, and the flood of images and sensations from the dream starts pouring into his waking consciousness.

Fuck. It was Jeffries. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

His heart is beating in his ears. He places a couple of fingers on his neck to track his pulse, and squints at the clock next to the bed as it flashes in double vision. 4:04 am. He was supposed to write everything down from the dream immediately. But at the moment the room was tilting at such a wild angle that Albert was afraid he'd fall off the bed and onto the ceiling if he tried to move even an inch from this spot to try and find a pen and paper. He should at least tell Gordon, then--he would want Albert to wake him up for this--

And the thought unlocks a new stream of images and words from the dream--Jeffries’ voice echoing in his head--

_Like I never existed..._

Albert squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back nausea. There was no way he would make it to the bathroom in this kind of dizziness.

He lay there, rigid, clutching at the sheets on the bed. Tried to bring his mind back into his body from this carnival-ride world by focusing on his physical senses. He could hear the deep, regular breathing of sleep coming from the man lying next to him. He could feel Gordon’s back pressed up along his spine. Solid. Broad, constant-- _warm._ The man was like a heater. Albert breathed back into that warmth as much he could without actually moving, feeling the heat on his back, realizing it was a grounding force, something that he could focus his attention on while the swirling chaos he had awakened into slowly settled into something navigable.

And another glimpse of the dream surfaced…

_Run after him with a broom, cleanin’ up the soot off his boots when you should be focusing on helpin’ Cooper…_

Cooper’s face hovers in his mind’s eye. Albert squeezes his eyes shut as another wave of nausea hits. Cooper. God, Cooper. His thoughts start to swirl and twist, keeping pace and direction with the room that was spinning around him.

He had awakened into the year 1999, a year he had never wanted. At least not like this. He had hoped, 10 years ago, that at this point in his life he would have finally succeeded in giving that man, Dale Cooper, what he felt they both deserved. He had hoped that now they would be lying in their bed face-to-face, tired but content in each other's arms, perhaps after coming home from a double date with Diane in the city. Perhaps, in this dream, in this other 1999, he had resigned from the Bureau as an agent while he was still relatively young enough to enjoy life outside of work, and had taken a teaching job somewhere, one that afforded the time needed to make the occasional trip back to Washington to visit their friend Harry. In this dream, in this other 1999, he had friends, a lover, a life.

But reality, for Albert, was sleeping back-to-back with Gordon Cole of all people in a greasy motel in rural Nevada. Reality was hunting a new lead on the ghost of a former lover, distanced from every friend he ever had, bitter, nauseous, dizzy from nightmares--God, the dream, he had to do something about the dream--lying in a posture that evoked memories of a former… bedmate. Is that what he and Cooper had been? Bedmates? Could they have been more? Something with longevity and partnership, an intimacy and commitment that could have lasted 25 years or longer? He'll never know. Cooper was lost before they ever had the chance to find out. Sent by there by Gordon Cole, straight into a pair of claws that had wrapped its fingers around him as soon as he had stepped foot in that town. He doesn't hate Gordon, despite everything that's happened. He has never hated anyone. But he hates that this posture, back-to-back with him in the dark, is the posture of his life now--

Suddenly the spinning stops, and the swirl of racing thoughts and images and emotions long since packed away crash to a halt. And Albert wonders, in that way one does at 4am, when the world is blue and dark and full of questions about what is and what will be and what could have been, just where in his life the tracks had become crossed in such a way that he was led to this point. Suddenly the idea that he could have let his life unravel this far away from what he had wanted for himself seemed impossible. An illusion. The idea that he had chosen to stay with the man who had let Cooper walk straight into Twin Peaks and out of their lives, ignoring every shouted word of warning from Albert about the inevitability of disaster, could not be true. He could not be responsible for such a reality. It was unbearable. It was almost betrayal. No, _this_ was the dream, one to which he had just become lucid, and soon he would wake up and find himself in the life he was really meant to have. But for now this lucid dream was whatever he wanted it to be, to be rearranged and ordered according to his liking. And he wanted it to be a dream of him, lying next to Cooper.

He is not so sure now just who this is sleeping at his back. He wonders what would happen in this dream if he turned over and put his arm on the man lying next to him. He wonders if he would find Cooper there, sleeping soundly, dreaming his wonderland dreams, stirring at Albert's touch to pull him into a tight nocturnal embrace--

Suddenly that man stirs--shudders awake as if from a dream--and Albert snaps back to reality and freezes, as if he was just caught investigating something he shouldn't. He hears Gordon give a little groan, feels Gordon fling back the blankets of the bed. Loses the warmth of Gordon's back against his, leaving him cold and exposed, as Gordon sits up and walks heavily to the bathroom. Watches, with his heart still beating in his ears, as the yellow of the bathroom light flashes onto the dark wall that he's been facing for the past half hour. Sees it eclipsed again by the shadow of Gordon swinging the door shut behind him. Hears Gordon retch repeatedly into the toilet.

* * *

III.

Gordon knows that he's dreaming. Lucid. Theoretically, he should have complete control over the dreamscape. But he didn't choose this. It's not something one can choose.

Who chose it? Who dreamt it? If not him, then who is the dreamer?

He pulls his gun. Holds it low, creeps toward the door. Fluttering moths in blue buzzing fluorescent light. The number 8. He watches himself pull the gun, hold it low, creep toward the door. Dreamer dreamed subject object. He pulls his gun, holds it low, creeps toward the door. Fluttering moths pulled into the blue. The number 8. Lois Duffy. He knows exactly where he's going. He has been here more times that he can count. He remembers every frame. A blue fluorescent light between two mirrors, reflecting infinitely in reverse.

It's not something one can choose; you can only be chosen by it. Decisions, choices--even causality itself--mean little here, or at least something very different from what they mean in the waking world. Here lucidity is his curse, the ability to see all possibilities and outcomes and enact precisely none of them. Fully cognizant of his own impotence and lack of agency as the dream unfolds, he is forced to watch and feel and vividly relive this experience of being drawn once again into a nightmare that his mind has played back for him almost every night for almost 25 years.

The light from the motel room flickers and spits. He crouches under the open window, hearing the television inside the room blare on with an old movie he knows but can't place.  He is alone this time. Jeffries is not here, existing all the more by virtue of not existing, a vacuum of presence in this dream/memory/premonition/nightmare. The eye of an eyeless duck.

The gunshot. He kicks in the door, sweeps automatically, looking everywhere but seeing nothing. Mind blank, he exists only in adrenaline and muscle memory as his body responds to an ancient narrative it has fulfilled endlessly in past, present, and future. He knows this room better than he knows himself.

But something is different this time. There is a disruption. There is a psychosomatic sensation of someone dipping and stirring a finger into his ground of being, spinning and reordering the liquified fabric of the dreamscape itself/himself/themselves… he receives, suddenly, at least three different pronouns and none and all of them are his--they spin and swirl, like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup-- 

The dreamscape lags and slows, a rubber band drawn back and stretched to critical limit. He moves, turns towards the body on the ground, the blood splattered on the carpet, each moment an eternity; he differentiates frame by frame as if in a time delay, existing in a thousand places at once, a thousand arms, a thousand eyes, a revelation of self. And then the rubber band snaps and releases, an energetic, temporal collapse that hurtles him forward into one body, a delusion of self.

There is a horrific buzzing in his ears, the scream of an electric banshee. Cooper is on the ground, a bullet wound bleeding freely from his abdomen. Cooper is saying something to him with a sad, almost sympathetic smile on his face. Gordon can't hear him. He can't hear him over the snapping and spitting of electric wires in his ears. God, he can't hear anything. He can't hear anything. He screams at Cooper that he can't hear him. He screams but he can make no sound--there is only the sound of electricity--

Cooper points--Gordon follows his sightline--to the gun in his hand--it is warm--he drops it in horror--

Cooper vanishes before his eyes--

He surfaces from the dream with a gasp.  His stomach clenches and burns, screaming a visceral warning, and he flings back the blankets, staggers to the bathroom. Smacks at the light switch. Barely has time to pull the toilet seat up before he vomits, his entire body shuddering in an attempt to purge the image of Cooper on the floor pressed into his retinas as if it were some sort of foreign material, poison, a virus. He heaves, and his inner contents hit the bottom of the toilet bowl, reverberating loudly around the motel bathroom.

The act of vomiting is the most visceral experience possible of the bondage of the will. Once it starts it cannot be stopped through any force of will. And it is a kind of meditation by coercion. Your mind is blank and clear. You can exist in that moment only within the physical sensations of your body--the cramping of your stomach, the bile corroding the lining of your throat, tears purged from the corners of your eyes. You are forced to witness directly your own pathetic frailty in a way that is persistent and clenching and cannot be escaped. You can see only yourself at your most compelled and wretched and must accept it without comment. Afterwards, you may ask what you have done to cause your own body to betray you like this, but in the moment of reckoning, you can neither explain, question, or defend. It is a moment of accountability, a meeting face-to-face.

Gordon’s stomach finally releases him from its accusations, and he blinks, teary-eyed, at his insides splattered around the white porcelain of the toilet. He spits, wipes his mouth, and flushes, watching it all flow down in a spiraling watery vortex where it will be carried away into some far away, underground world, away from sight, away from mind. He turns to the sink, washing his mouth out with water, but that sickly sweet taste of bile won't rinse, and the grit on his teeth makes him cringe. He brushes his teeth and rinses with mouthwash in another futile attempt to cover up the lingering taste, and then scrubs his hands.

He straightens, and looks himself over in the bathroom mirror. His hair is misshapen from sleep and sweat. He dips his head under the faucet to wet it and then combs it backward, but cringes at the sensation of hair touching his neck and face as it flops down over his ears and into his eyes. He tries again, parting it on the right side this time, and then combing back. It's a little lopsided, but it holds at least, off of his ears and away from his face.

Then he turns the water off. Stares at himself in the bathroom mirror for a long time, several minutes perhaps. He would look mostly put back together if it weren’t for the swollen redness in his eyes. But there was nothing he could do about that betrayal, except wait for it to pass in its own time.

There’s a knock at the bathroom door. His head turns toward his left, and he stares at the door, eyebrows furrowed at the presence he senses on the other side.

* * *

IV.

“Gordon?”

Albert raps on the door again.

“Gordon.” He says, louder.

No answer. Albert frowns. Could Gordon not hear him? Should he check in on him just in case? There hadn't been any sound from the bathroom for several minutes.

He hesitates for a moment, and then puts his hand on the doorknob to push it open.

But it suddenly opens on its own, and then Gordon is standing there, gazing at him with one of his distant, echoing looks, like he is watching something play out in front of his eyes  that has happened before and will happen again.

Albert blinks into the light, holding a hand up to block some of it out while his eyes adjust from the darkness of the rest of the motel room.

“All right, chief…?”

Albert trails off and blinks at the man standing in the doorway. He's suddenly uncomfortable, and wishes he had just stayed in bed, pretending to be asleep. Gordon looks… strange. Hair parted differently. Those ridiculous, blue and white striped pajamas. The eyes are the strangest sight. Red and bloodshot. Which is to be expected after a severe vomiting spell like the one he just had, but still extremely unnerving on a man who he's never seen as anything other than perfectly groomed and put together.

But otherwise Gordon seems… fine. And why shouldn't he be? What could possibly happen to someone in a motel bathroom? Gordon had probably just eaten too much fried food again and was reaping the digestive consequences. That dream was just making him paranoid--

Fuck, the dream. He needed to talk about it now. Who knew how much he'd already forgotten.

“Look, I know you're not feeling well, but I need to talk to you about a dream I had just now where I spoke to--”

“Yes, I need to smoke.” Gordon nodded strangely.

“What--no, Gordon, I said, I _spoke_ \--”

“I need to smoke.” Gordon says over him again, flatly, and then shuffles past Albert into the main bedroom.

Albert follows his movements around the room, feeling a dull and inexplicable sense of anxiety suddenly creep into his chest. Gordon picks up his pack of Lucky Strikes from the nightstand and steps into his slippers, and then walks back to the door. He stops and turns back toward Albert, squinting at him as if trying to see past and through him into the bathroom.

“I need to smoke,” he says looking at Albert, with a strange and grim finality.

Albert stares back at him, shifting the weight between his feet uncomfortably. Wishes Gordon would stop looking at him like that. “All right, boss. Go smoke, then.”

There was another long moment where Gordon stared at Albert with that strange, portentious gaze… Albert felt like he was being x-rayed…

And then Gordon opened the door and stepped out into the parking lot.

The door swung shut behind him. A strange heaviness of presence suddenly evaporated from the room and Albert exhaled, feeling a weight lifted from his chest. He rubbed a hand over the top of his head and down over his face. What the fuck _was_ that?

He stared at the door. He hadn’t told Gordon about the dream, either. Why was this proving so difficult? He hesitated, and then slipped on his shoes, and followed Gordon outside.

* * *

V.

 

There’s a shadow leaning against the side of their government sedan. Gordon lights a cigarette, and the shadow flutters and flies toward it, creating a whiteish, smoky orb around the end of it, sparking and spitting.

-Is he out here?

_-Last I heard he was workin’ something out of a warehouse about 100 miles outside of Carson City._

-When do you mean ‘last.’

_-Two moons ago. From Ray. The Major confirms._

-He’s already gone then. He’s slippery. Moves around a lot. You need to give me more notice.

_-Well, you’ll understand that I’m a bit immobile most of the time. And it would’ve taken me just as long to get ahold of our little Albert anyway._

-… I told you we’re not going to do it that way.

_-A lure don’t do no good without any bait. And you need a sword arm. You don’t got it in you and I’m not around to do it for you anymore._

-I don’t want him involved in this any more than he already is.

_-Too late. I called him just a few minutes ago._

-God damn it, you’re going to blow the whole damn thing! What the hell did you tell him?

_-Didn’t tell him nothin’. You know I can keep a secret. That man pacing around your room is the one with the loose lips that’ll sink this goddamn ship._

-You’re not to talk to him any more. That’s the end of it. Do you understand?

_-Mmm. I think you’re just worried we talked about you and I didn’t say somethin’ too nice._

-That's not it at all.

_-I know, darlin’. But if you so bent on protectin’ him in this, why don’t you do you both a favor and just cut him loose?_

There was the sound of the motel door unlatching behind Gordon. The smoke orb on the end of his cigarette fizzled and sparked, and then evaporated.

 “... Everything all right?” Came a gruff voice at his shoulder.

 “... Fine, Albert.”

“Not trying to force you to talk, but you sounded pretty sick back there.” 

Gordon frowned at nothing in particular, drawing on his cigarette pensively.

“I don't like motels,” he finally said.

There’s a long silence while Albert shuffles uncomfortably. Gordon flicks ash from his cigarette onto the pavement. For all of his pretensions at emotional privacy, Albert is so easy to read, especially after working together for so long.

“I had a dream.”

Gordon’s frown deepens. Cut him loose he could not. But he could keep him in the dark.

“What are we doing out here, Albert?”

“... What?” Albert balked at the abrupt subject change.

“Out here. In the desert.”

“We're looking for Cooper.” Albert said, looking at Gordon in a sideways glance. Then he turns impatiently on his heels toward him. “Look, I need to talk to you--”

“No.” Gordon dragged on his cigarette. “We're not.”

Albert grits his teeth in frustration. “Okay, I don't know why you're here, Gordon, but that is why I'm here. And it's only reason I would ever share a motel room with you, let alone a bed, in the middle of fucking nowhere, Nevada.”

Gordon shook his head. “We're looking for someone, but it's not Cooper.”

“... I'm sorry?”

He frowned. “We're driving back to Reno tomorrow morning and we're going home.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I said we're going back home. We're not going to find him out here, Albert. He's not here.”

He sees Albert shift his weight in his peripheral vision. He knows the look Albert is throwing him without even having to turn his head: guarded, suspicious, wary, an attempt to inquire further, to make sure he heard right before being totally lost to anger.

“... Why.”

Gordon squinted, looking again at nothing in particular. “He isn't real, Albert.”

“What are you talking about.” Albert snapped. “Look, _chief_ , I know you just lost all of your fucking marbles praying to the porcelain god, but I don't appreciate you saying something so asinine and offensive as the idea that Cooper isn't _real_. He's real, and he's in a lot of trouble, and we have to find him.”

Gordon stared at the horizon beyond the dead parking lot, beyond the empty highway, beyond the rough outline of stones and desert shrubs.  

 _The Cooper you have in your head, Albert. The one you're looking for. You’ve made him up based on a Cooper you remember from a decade ago. But that Cooper exists only in your head now. You keep him there because you need him. But he's just an empty ghost. A concept. A thoughtform. Made out of memories and experiences and emotions and wishes and desires. No substance. That Cooper you remember and long for is a_ dream _. You dreamed him up. And you want to live in the dream with him, with this Cooper you've created in your head._

_Maybe one day, Albert, this man you've created will show up out of the blue. Unannounced, disrupting everything you've managed to build in his absence. He will look at you and through you without seeing you, talking about things you have seen only in dreams but cannot fully understand. Things you think he might be able to explain, now that he has found his way back. Explanations about why things happened the way they did, and why they are the way they are now. But then he will vanish again in front of your eyes, taking his explanations with him. Like he never existed._

Gordon looked over at him, his face tired and heavy and full of stone, to hide something broken that some might identify as love, what Gordon would identify as the burden of duty, and that would inevitably be interpreted by Albert as emotional sleight of hand--a selfish magic designed to confuse and beguile, an empty ruse that emptied everything and everyone it touched. And perhaps it was. The man behind the curtain hard at work, pulling levers and spinning webs and weaving dreams.

“If he's real, then show me where he is.” Gordon gestured widely, an illusionist weary of his own tricks, displaying his tired magic on the black stage of the parking lot. 

Albert stared at him in disbelief, and then took a step toward him. “You think that's _funny_?”

“That wasn't a joke. That was a request, Albert. If he's real, show him to me.”

There was a long moment while Gordon watched the anger on Albert's face gather into thunderous storm clouds. He exhaled a long column of smoke, and prepared himself for the downpour.

“How fucking dare you.”

Gordon held up a hand. “Albert--”

Albert strode toward him, grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him close, his voice spitting and poisonous. “You listen to me. How _dare_ you give up on him like this. After what you did.” Gordon didn't reply, and Albert tightened his grip and shook him for emphasis. “Do you _hear_ me?! _This is your fucking fault!_ ”

Albert's voice reverberated off the motel walls and the black concrete. Gordon stared back at him, quiet and unresponsive, smoke billowing off the end of the cigarette hanging from his lips.

_I’m sorry, Albert._

“He gave you _everything!_ He followed you until the very end, right into that fucking hellhole! Diane and I _begged_ you to pull him out of there and you _refused_ , you stubborn, selfish son of a bitch, you refused, you ignored us, you ignored _me,_ and just told me to _trust_ you! And now you're just going to drop the most promising lead to find him we've had in years! It's like you think nothing he did even _matters!_ ” Albert’s voice shook. “I _know_ he's alive, that he's in trouble, and that he needs us, even if you don't, you _fucking_ \--” Albert inhaled sharply, breathless. “He--Cooper deserves better than that--” Something deep and painful welled up in Albert's eyes. “ _Fuck_ , Gordon! _I_ deserve better than that!”

They stared at each other, inches apart, for a long, silent moment. Albert waited for some sort of answer.

Cooper was alive, of course. Gordon knew it with a dead, professional finality that revealed this emotional outburst of “conviction” from Albert to be little more than an attempt at persuading himself of this fact. But just because Cooper was alive, that did not mean he was real, and until Albert understood this distinction Gordon could not tell him that he felt Cooper’s heart beating in his ears at night when he couldn't sleep, that Cooper stood at the edge of his dreams, that he stood waiting and vigilant for Cooper's triumphant return from his wayward expedition to usher in a prophetic and cataclysmic turning of the wheel, the end of which no one could truly predict or possibly begin to fathom--a return that had so very little to do with the dream of Cooper that Albert was chasing in his head.

Cooper was alive, but he was not real. Realness was relationship. Realness was in-the-flesh. Realness was the opportunity for the other person to define themselves on their own terms, moment to moment. Realness was understanding deeply that past and future were empty, that things could never be any different than what they were moment to moment. Now to now. Despite the temptations of hindsight on the avoidable wrong turns and arrogances and irretrievable decisions of former nows that had created this particular now. Realness was Albert screaming at him in a motel parking lot at 4am, calling him a stubborn, selfish son of a bitch, revealing in a tragically beautiful and honest way the entirety of his grief from a deep, cosmic loneliness, and pretending it was really about a man that he thought he loved but, in some sense, had never actually even met.

Gordon put a gentle hand on Albert’s shoulder. He wished this now was something else, more for Albert's sake than his own--he wished that their now was something... happier, warmer, whole, triune, something more like a lively meal at 4am at their favorite diner with their favorite person, chatting happily and loudly about the song patterns of birds while Albert looked on in sleepy contentment disguised as skeptical judgement...

He blinked. His thoughts were running away with him again. As long as the two of them held onto that Cooper that existed only in their memories and nostalgia and not in _realness_ , they would never find him. Because they would be chasing the ghost of a Dale Cooper they had known in another life, and who in one sense, no longer existed. And in another sense had possibly _never_ existed.

“Cooper deserves better than what we've made for him in our heads, Albert.”

 _And so do you,_ he thought sadly, looking carefully over the lines on Albert's face, and the gray beginning to twinge the edges of his hair--early marks of age that Gordon was only just now seeing in him.

Albert’s mouth opened and closed and opened again, soundless with grief or betrayal or disbelief or some combination of the three. And then he fled into the desert.

* * *

VI.

Albert strides into the early morning darkness of the desert as far as he can. Until that motel is barely more than a blip on the horizon. Until he is alone. Alone with only himself and his thoughts of Cooper. They tear at him and his insides like crusted, clawed, dirty hands.

He wonders if he will ever go back there. The idea of going back to Gordon makes him physically ill. He wonders if he will die out here, in the desert, rather than choosing to have to face him again.

He turns away from the motel and sees a cactus some distance away. He blinks. Something about its shape is familiar. He approaches it slowly, hesitatingly, frowning. And then he stops. He realizes there is something in the pocket of his pajamas. He reaches inside with a frown and removes it.

A card. The king of diamonds.

And suddenly he remembers and foresees everything.

Oh god. No. No. No.

_The horror._

He collapses onto the ground and vomits, the contents of his stomach clenching and gripping in a desperate attempt to empty himself of this revelation.

The cramping stops, and Albert weeps, gasping for breath. And the cactus has disappeared, replaced by a slender, white and floral print frame slinking toward him out of the blue lunar desert horizon.

“You rang?”

Albert wails at that voice. There is death in it. He falls forward into the ground, clutching at the sand that runs through his fingers.

Albert chokes out between his sobs:

“Take him from me. Please. Whatever you want. Memories, dreams, nightmares. I don’t them anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to exist anymore. I don’t want to be me. I just want to be empty. I want to be gone.”

Phillip squats down in front of Albert, puffing on his eternal Marlboro.

“Whatever you say, Albie.”

A bell is struck, reverberating across space and time. It is struck and struck again, faster and faster, until each individual tone becomes a seamless, eternal, unified hum.

A death knell.

A cloud of white smoke builds from the cosmic cigarette on Jeffries’ lips, filling Albert's eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, objects of mind, consciousness, old age and death... 

* * *

_Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is also emptiness, that which is emptiness also form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. All things are marked with emptiness; they do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease. Therefore in emptiness, there is no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no mental formations, no consciousness; no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of eyes until no realm of mind-consciousness; no ignorance and also no extinction of ignorance until no old-age-and-death, and also no extinction of old age and death; no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path; no cognition, also no attainment of enlightenment._

* * *

VII.

Gordon watched him leave, striding away across the parking lot in anguish and then disappearing around the corner at the end of the motel building. Gordon stayed there a few minutes longer, finishing his cigarette. He would not go after Albert. Albert would come back on his own time. There was little good in arguing with someone who wanted to remain asleep in the dream they had created. For now, Albert wanted to hold onto his dream. And Gordon would let him have it a little longer, because truthfully, he wanted it too.

He wished he could remain in that dream with Albert. Spend his days chasing a ghost that could never be found, in order to preserve a past and a future that had never really existed for either of them as much as they both had wanted it to. But there was no greater sin than choosing to go back to sleep once you had been awakened. He had made that mistake once before, after Jeffries, and look what it had wrought. Chasing a ghost in the desert. And who knew how many more ghosts Albert and Gordon would make together if he allowed them both to go on like this. How many different Coopers and Dianes and Jeffries would they create in their heads to absolve themselves, to blame themselves, to distract themselves, to drive themselves onward into oblivion, into an age of apocalyptic revelation, a drawing of the curtain.

And how many versions of themselves had they created in this dream? He knew Albert had created at least two versions of him in his head. The first, a version of himself that Albert had decided to follow even after it was all said and done and lost. True to his surname, he had been the vestigial bricks of black coal and soot that Albert had huddled around to warm himself after that fire Dale Cooper carried had come and burned up everything in their lives but each other. But who had started the fire? And did coal become fire? Did fire become ash? Were coal and fire and ash ultimately all the same thing in the end? Or were they separate entities all linked in a fiery wheel of causation and delusion that, once started, could never be put out?

Suddenly the image of Cooper bleeding on the floor rips back into his mind, and he can feel the warm gun in his hand. His stomach cramps, and he closes his eyes, riding out waves of nausea that threatened to turn into another vomiting spell right there in the middle of the parking lot. But ultimately those waves didn't go anywhere,  amount to anything, or accomplish anything. And somehow that was worse than actually vomiting. At least after vomiting there was usually a sense of relief or resolution.

Eventually the nausea subsides, and he drops his cigarette on the pavement and stamps it out with his foot, unable to finish it. And he remembers the second version of himself he knew Albert had created along with the first: the Gordon Cole he could never forgive. Not ever. The one he possibly even hated, though Albert, in what was left of his principles of love and pacifism, might not choose to use that word--

He stopped and sighed, rubbing a hand agitatedly to smooth over his hair. Again with the runaway thoughts!  And who was saying that Albert hated him? Was it Albert? Or was it one of the many Alberts _he_ had created in his head? Or was it the Gordon Cole who hated Gordon Cole? And if yes, who had created that Gordon Cole? Himself? Albert? The both of them together? Someone else entirely?

Anxiety billowed up in his chest, and the nausea returned. He was starting to fragment. He took one last look at where Albert had disappeared into the night desert and then went quickly back inside to the motel room. Went into the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the shower, began to undress. Began his metamorphosis back into the Gordon Cole he knew they both wanted.

 

* * *

8.

Albert returns to find Gordon sitting on the edge of the bed tying his shoes in dim morning light. He now looked very much like the Gordon Cole he was familiar with. And after the experience of the past few hours, this is the one he now believes he only ever wants to see. The perfectly groomed hair, the gleaming skin and nails, the suit, the tie. The highly compartmentalized, businesslike manner. The fearless leader, sturdy, solid, a fortress who met every unusual and unexpected circumstance with barely a hair’s breadth of deviation.

This Gordon's return meant he could pretend he hadn't spent the past hour of his life experiencing spiritual crisis off a desolate and lonely Nevada highway. This Gordon would look at his disheveled, sandy, exhausted appearance without comment. This Gordon would let him be totally and completely dead inside in peace.

“Oh, Albert.” Gordon says, looking up at Albert standing in the doorway, one foot stacked on the other thigh while his fingers work at his laces. “I thought we'd get an early start, since I don't think either of us will be sleeping in more this morning. 

“No,” Albert agreed, his voice a flat monotone.

Gordon stands, shakes out his suit. Smooths down the fabric. Tugs on his sleeves. Walks to the closet mirror for final adjustments.

“I want to talk to you about something,” he says, touching at his hair.

Albert blinks his silent, exhausted, cold assent. Lets this cold reality just wash over him.

“I’m up for the deputy directorship."

The bizarreness of Gordon making such a statement at a time like this is only fitting. It’s the kind of existence Albert wants now.

“... Congratulations.”

“If I take it, I'll be closing the old regional office. And I'll need someone to take over Blue Rose.”

There's a lot in those two sentences that Albert doesn't really know what to do with, especially in his current state. It just kind of buzzes around meaninglessly in his brain. So he just latches on to what he can.

“If you…” Albert paused. “You've been angling for that job for years.”

“Yes.” Gordon said.

Albert doesn't answer. Gordon straightens his tie.

“I would want you to take over as taskforce director. The first thing you'd need to do is find a successor.”

Albert doesn't know what else to say or how to feel at the moment. He isn't sure he's capable of feeling anything anymore. So he just stands there, looking ridiculous in his wrinkled pajamas still covered in sand and grit from where he had been kneeling in the desert in spiritual annihilation.

“We could do a lot with the directorship,” Gordon muses aloud.

 _We._ But something catches in him now. That word is impossible to digest. It just brings up too many emotions, some of which even now are oddly sentimental, but many of which are painful and negative... And others that are reminiscent of...

And then something else thunders through him, and that pain reanimates him for a moment. In his emptiness those old emotions and past selves are emptied, and he is suddenly filled with a pain that is ancient and strong and rooted and weathered and nothing like the wretched, delusional anguish he had hurled at Gordon in the night. He is awake.

He suddenly remembers why he is here, in the middle of this fucking godforsaken wasteland. And it has nothing to do with Cooper _or_ Gordon. He remembers what he had promised himself while looking at the face of Laura Palmer, dead on that cold, glittering autopsy table in a morgue on the edge of an impenetrable forest wilderness. What he had promised her.

This pain is Dead, in the fullest and most complete sense of the word.

“A lot of fucking damage, maybe.”

And there’s no response from Gordon. Albert stands with his fists clenched, electricity coursing through his body, watches Gordon continue to fuss over himself and his webspinning and theories and ideas and plots that just don’t fucking _matter,_ and with such a careful tedium--He begins to wonder if perhaps Gordon didn't even hear him at all in his dream of self-absorption and futility, and what he will have to do to make himself heard--

But then Gordon stops, and becomes very still for a moment, staring at himself. And then he turns around from that dark mirror and strides over to Albert to stand face-to-face, clutching at his shoulders with both hands.

Albert is astonished that there are tears in his eyes.

“But you'll go with me?"

* * *

_With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva depends on perfect wisdom and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance no fears exist. Far from every incorrect view one realizes the Way._

Gone, gone, gone beyond. Gone completely beyond.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> "Albert's spiritual practice is deeply personal, and he didn't learn it from Cooper." - Mark Frost
> 
> Thanks to Amatara for encouraging to finish this fic even after the devastation of the finale.
> 
> Thanks to Amatara and Laughingpineapple for being my rp Alberts and consistently giving me all sorts of writing ideas. My crops are watered, my plots plotted, etc
> 
> Thanks to David Lynch, Mark Frost, Kyle Maclachlan, Sheryl Lee et al for a beautiful and devastating ride.
> 
> Rest in peace, Miguel Ferrer and David Bowie.


End file.
